28 December 2001 ~ Some kind of a reward?

Lonely. Very close to bored.

Spent all of yesterday packing, cleaning out my mom's storage area, collecting more boxes to pack in, returning videos, sending out mail, cooking... Hell, I even got rid of some of my books and brought my old clothes to the Salvation Army.

It seems like I should get some sort of reward for this. An awesome email, for example. A big package in the mail. An invitation to a party. Hell, somebody to TALK to. But after all the work I did yesterday (with my mother's help, gahd bless her...), I came home to an email account full of porn (whoop dee do... Even if I LIKED porn, I couldn't afford it!), an empty mailbox, a quiet street, and nobody home. AND, no cable.

It's really hard for me to get to sleep when I'm alone. I don't mean I have to have someone sleeping WITH me, or I can't get to sleep (though that's nice!); I just can't seem to fall asleep without noise in the background. For the past few months, I've gone to sleep with Norman playing his guitar and watching TV. Very occasionally, I've gone to sleep with the sounds of the kids in the next building having a party. But what with the holidays, all the neighbors seem to be gone, Norman is away, and the entire street is dead silent.

Holidays, how do I hate thee. Let me count the ways...

Having lived the past week in complete silence, I've been thinking a lot about Santa Fe.

Santa Fe, where Easter weekend was unbearable. Easter weekend, when I hid in my room for four days straight without coming out except to go to the bathroom. Easter weekend. I don't even remember showering. I don't remember speaking to a soul, except the sole visitor to my room: this dude who invited me to a party. By that point, I'd completely forgotten how to interact with people, and was terrified to go to that party. So I stayed in my room. No email. No mail. No work. No play. Just hiding. Did I even EAT that whole weekend? I think I must have just kept refilling my coffeemaker with water. How depressing is THAT?

...And thinking about Santa Fe, I'm really sort of scared to go back to college. If having a social life is like having a limb, I was a quadriplegic with maybe half a stump for a right arm. If having a social life is like having a love-life, I was a eunuch. WHY? Because I was paralyzed with homesickness? Because I was watching my friends and family go down the drain from 2,500 miles away? Why did everybody else seem to think of their first year of college as this adventure, and I turned into this zombie?

Please, please, PLEASE gahd, don't let Evergreen be the same way...

I'll be living in a single -- my very own room. This is good for a couple of reasons, and bad for a couple of reasons. On the plus-side, I can theoretically bring anybody home, at any hour, and not get yelled at by my non-existent dorm-mates. I can spend late hours sharing Dos Equis and adventure-stories with nice people from other floors. I can SPILL my Dos Equis and not have to clean it up right away. And, gahd bless, I can sit at my computer and TYPE ALL THE TIME. Ohhhh, everything else be damned; I WILL finish my book.

But then again, living alone is living alone, any way you look at it, and aloneness is only fun if you've got something to do during which you don't want anybody else around.

I don't have any friends in Olympia. And Seattle's an hour away.

It's NOT hard to make friends, it really isn't. You start chatting about your hometown, and you've made a friend, guaranteed. You start chatting about David Lynch, and if you've made a friend that way, you've made one for a good long time. You wander up to somebody who's wearing something cool, and you tell them they're awesome. You've made a friend. You say, "hey, you're from here; want to show me a good place for coffee?" and you've got somebody to spend your day with.

So I shouldn't be worried, you know. I don't plan on feeling as alone as I did, way out in the middle of the desert. If I'm ever having a very, very bad day, I know I can always run away to Seattle, show up on any of half a dozen doorsteps, and say, "listen, I'm lonely and I have five bucks. You wanna hang out with me and help me find a wise way to spend it?"

My mom said she had a good feeling about Olympia. I asked, "did you have a good feeling about Santa Fe?" She said no.

Then again, I think Santa Fe is cursed. Come on: all those neo-Buddhists and spaceship worshippers? There's no way Santa Fe ISN'T cursed. Ask anybody!

I'm rambling by now. I guess I ought to go to the bank and finish up all the crap I started yesterday...

Be good.
~Helena*